Visualized Tiers and Ranks - Week 2 - 9/11/13

Here is an early Wednesday morning version of your tiers and rankings using rankings from 50 experts for picking your starters for Week 2. Each graph represents a players rank among experts, the true distance to the players around him, and a proposed tier based on a natural clustering algorithm.

Here is an example of how to use these charts: QB's Russell Wilson, Terrell Pryor, and Jay Cutler are ranked QB14, QB15, and QB16. On paper this might suggest that all three QB's are close. However, as the chart below shows, this is clearly not the case as Wilson is valued significantly higher this week over Pryor and Cutler, who are basically equals.

Use this charts to help you make decision about your lineup. As it is early in the week, expect an update tomorrow, Thursday 9/12, which I will post on twitter.

Quarter Backs

Vick surges up this week to QB10 after the Eagles hot performance in week 1. So does Pryor.

Anyone deciding between QB7 and QB11 this week is going to be a tough start/sit situation. As of Wednesday morning, Luck, Stafford, Kaepernick, Vick and RG3 are basically tied squarely in tier 3. Hopefully there will be more separation in an update tomorrow or Thursday.

Flex this week (and probably onwards) is noisy, as you can see from the tall grey standard deviation. Edelman has high average ranking relative to his position rank because a few experts have him ranked abnormally high for the flex spot. Expect an update later in the week.

Hopefully you are not deciding between two directly adjacent players within a tier, which at this point is a coin flip for flex if you go by expert consensus and my charts. Hope for better separation when I update tomorrow, Thursday, or later.

But if you are choosing between players on a different tier or more than 5 or so positions ranks apart, the choice should be clear.

As long as you have a kicker in the first two tiers, I wouldn't drop/swap for a week 2-only upgrade unless you have a special reason to. If you are sitting on a tier 3 kicker, I would recommended upgrading for the week.